Philip was most distressed when two of his valets died from heart attacks, one in the most dramatic of circumstances. Back in 1976, the Queen and the duke were guests at Lord Dalhousie’s estate in Scotland and were part of the shooting party. Valet Joe Pearce, who had been with the royal family for many years, was acting as Philip’s loader. The Queen was behind watching with binoculars, working her dogs and picking up the shot grouse. She saw a figure fall and for one awful moment thought it was the duke and ran as fast as she could to where the two men were. The duke was fine but Pearce was dead.

Prince Philip had his body sent back to his family and a special memorial service was arranged at St James’s Piccadilly, which he attended. This was a significant mark of respect, as the only memorials or funerals the Queen and the duke attend in a private capacity are those of very close friends or staff.

One such occasion took place when Bobo MacDonald, who worked for the Queen for sixty-seven years, finally died. When Bobo’s health eventually failed, the Queen hired round-the-clock private nurses to care for her in her suite of rooms at Buckingham Palace. When she died in September 1993, as a mark of her devotion the Queen came down to London from Balmoral for the funeral, which took place at the Chapel Royal in St James’s Palace.

Bobo was much more than a dresser, she was a close friend and one of the very few people who could say anything to the Queen that she thought she ought to know. She could mention with great honesty if perhaps the Queen had not put up a perfect appearance or if a colour they had both chosen did not suit her, and there were times when this daughter of a Scottish railwayman did exactly that. Like many of the female retainers who had devoted their lives to royal service, Miss MacDonald, as she was called by other staff, always faintly resented the presence of her mistress’s husband. Philip would in turn try to keep her firmly in her place. He believed her role was to open the curtains in the morning and let the dogs in – tasks she had performed every morning for many years before Prince Philip came on the scene. They eventually came to an amicable non-spoken agreement to keep out of each other’s way.